So, Apple held its usual autumn press get-together just now, and after a few rather uninspiring ones (to me, at least), they finally managed to blow me away, with the new MacBook Air (especially the 11.6" variant). They also gave a sneak peek at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which has... An App Store. An App Store Apple is going to open on Snow Leopard within 90 days.

...but same weight as my 13.3" laptop, which has a better GPU, Core i5 CPU and faster storage. And a higher-resolution screen. Of course it costs more, but hey. This is a decent effort, though, and the MBA badly needed the refresh.

I too saw that in the Sony Style shop in Wellington. They're very nice machines but one still can't avoid the fact that you're going to be saddled with Windows - the hardware maybe sexy but if the operating system is ugly as sin (usability, reliability, ascetically etc) it isn't going to matter how great the hardware is, the operating system will always let it down.

I along with many others purchase our machines on the complete package rather than this over the top fixation on hardware specifications alone. It is all very nice to boast about hardware specifications but f the vehicle that enables you to run your applications (the operating system) is subpar then it won't matter how good the hardware is - the machine is a let down.